The View From the Finish Line Photo Bridge

I turn 50 today. A few weeks back I told my wife I wanted to run 50 minutes today. Not a big deal for a lot of runners. Some have been known to run 50 miles on their 50th. But for me it was the right goal for the right reasons on the right day.

After yesterday, I don’t think I’ll be running 50 minutes today.

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With a couple of photographers, I was just beyond the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the explosions occurred on Monday. We had press credentials to stand on the photographers’ bridge that extends across Boylston Street, a perfect vantage point to watch the incoming runners. Just about 2 p.m., we found our spot on the bridge, and started our wait.

Since early in the morning we had been following two runners. Each had a goal for finishing Boston. Each had the right goal for the right reason on the right day. They would be the subjects of an upcoming story in Runner’s World. The photographers and I had spent the very early part of the day with them in Hopkinton, the race’s time-honored start. I watched as one of our runners gave Dick and Rick Hoyt a hug minutes before the father-son duo set off on another of their celebrated Boston runs. We watched as the first wave of runners, mobility-impaired runners, which included one of our subjects, stood for a moment of 26 silent seconds for the victims of Newtown. When the quiet was broken and the runners inched toward the start, our runner shouted out to the small knot, some running with prosthetic legs, some with legs bearing a lifetime of challenges, “Whether it takes five minutes or 15 minutes, a mile is still a mile!” The knot cheered, and at 9 a.m. sharp, they were off.

We then went to find our other running subject. She was set to take off at 10:40 a.m., in the last wave of the marathon. We walked with her, and thousands of others, as she made the trek from the grassy staging area to the starting line a mile or so away. She smiled the entire way, taking the high fives of well wishers expressing amazement, to their friends and fellow runners and anyone within earshot, of what this woman was about to try and do. “What an inspiration,” a woman whispered to me, nodding ahead toward our runner.

If things went right, our two runners would meet up near the finish line, maybe cross hand in hand. If they did, it would make for some photo.

So the photographers and I hustled back to our car, and headed back to Boston. We made one stop in Wellesley, near the 14-mile point, where we, after minutes of peering and stretching our necks and wondering if we had missed them, finally spotted one of our runners among the continuing stream pushing toward the Newton Hills. She was a bit off schedule, but smiling, running, easily, seemingly, along a flat stretch.

An hour later, around 2 p.m., the photographers and I were atop the photo bridge, waiting for our runners. If everything went according to their plans, they would be crossing at just about 3 p.m. (Moments earlier, the two photographers had had their bags checked at a security point. I thought nothing of the search as I watched the guards poke through their heavy bags filled with lenses and batteries and other assorted gear. Such searches have become routine.) After several hours of hustling around, it was nice just to stand and watch. We were at the finish of the most famous race in the world.

It was nice just to listen to the sounds. Dion was playing over the loudspeaker. And then Jackson Browne. Different race announcers took turns introducing runners to the crowd. The names meant nothing—unless, of course, you knew the name being called out, and you were happy your friend or sister or husband was finally done, and safe.

Like at any marathon, runners kept coming and coming and coming. They were 3:21 finishers, and 3:32 finishers, and 3:41 finishers. Some had smiles as wide as the bridge we were standing on. Others staggered across, with medical professionals waiting to assist them. They had wheelchairs ready to bring them to the medical tent, about 50 yards behind us. I saw a couple of moms run through the finish clutching the hands of their kids. I watched people in the grandstands below us looking for their favorite runners. I spotted the wife and son of one of our runners. They sat in the front row of the bleacher seats. They had a perfect view of the finish and the storefronts across Boylston Street.

I heard the race announcer say the Red Sox had beaten the Rays, 3-2, a few minutes earlier, a few minutes away, at Fenway. The crowd cheered a bit. “Damn,” I said quietly to myself. I’m a Yankee fan.

I heard Johnny Cash croon, “I walk the line.”

I heard one of the photographers I was with, who earlier in the day had said his longest run ever had been 15 miles, say, “This is crazy,” as he watched the finish line parade.

I heard people cheering, especially after the race announcer urged them to get louder.

I heard an explosion. I heard another one.

It would be a couple of hours before I heard from our two runners. In between I talked to a runner who had been a mile or so from the finish. He was getting texts and messages from his wife at that point. Something was wrong, he knew. What, exactly, he wasn’t sure. “I could tell my wife was pretty upset,” he told me. Then he told me he had lost his dad on September 11th.

Around 6 p.m., I spoke with one of our runners. He was safe, and so were his wife and son. He told me he had seen our other runner. She was okay, too. The two of them had been told to stop with less than a mile to go. They wouldn’t cross the finish line together, and be photographed together. Instead, he said, “We just hugged” and walked off the course together.

They didn’t finish their first Boston Marathon. For all the wrong reasons.

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